Camouflage Cowboy

“Nick Cavanaugh. I had no idea you were following me.”

A stream of guilt flooded his insides, but he forded it with a grin. The elevator bell chimed in the background and he glanced up to where Nolan and Harlan waited for him. Making eye contact with Harlan, he nodded slightly, certain that Harlan had recognized his purse-snatching target from earlier in the afternoon and was more than happy to duck for cover inside the elevator.

“I’m checking in on someone. Visiting hours and all.” He took the opportunity to look down at the little boy sitting in the wheelchair that Grace had been pushing to the exit, and now clung to.

Her sweet smile faded as she reached down to brush her hand across the top of the little boy’s head. “Caleb, this is Mr. Nick Cavanaugh. Nick, this is my son, Caleb.”

“Hey, buddy.” He bent over, reached out and grasped the little boy’s hand, giving it a gentle shake. The child’s line of sight started at his boot-clad feet, went up his jean-encased legs and eventually ended with Caleb staring up at him with eyes the same heavenly blue as his mother’s.

“Are you a cowboy, Mister Nick?”

Nick straightened, amused by the little boy’s power of observation. “Hmm. Yeah. You could say I’m a cowboy.”

“Gotta horse?”

“A few.”

“Can I ride one? My friend Zachary-G says it’s fun. He rides horses all the time.”

Caution raked over Nick’s nerves. He hadn’t considered the connection that might exist between Zachary Giordano and Caleb Marshall. They did both attend Cradles to Crayons, and Grace did work there part-time as a preschool teacher. Maybe he should have enlisted another team member besides Harlan McClain to pull off the ruse, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty.

“Maybe sometime your mom will bring you out to the ranch and I’ll saddle one up for you.”

“Really?” Caleb’s eyes widened to the size of silver dollars. “Wait till I tell Zachary-G!”

The air was suddenly charged with vibes Nick could almost feel. He straightened, dialing in on Grace’s face, on the way she pressed her lips together as if she were about to cry. His heart twisted in his chest. Instinctively he reached out and brushed his hand against her upper arm—a mistake, he realized, when a jolt of heat passed between them. She pulled away.

“Let me.” He was glad when she stepped aside and allowed him to take the handles of the wheelchair. “Where’s your car?”

She pointed to the Camry and fell in next to him as they pushed through the sliding doors, across the breezeway and out into the parking lot.

Caleb began to hum, his tiny voice picking up the vibrations from the asphalt as the wheelchair wheels bumped over the uneven surface.

Nick swallowed hard, sucked into the emotion coming from the woman next to him. Caleb Marshall was a very sick little boy. How sick? He didn’t know. But he intended to find out.

“Here we are, tiger.”

Grace moved past them to unlock the car, then pulled the right rear passenger-side door open.

Nick eased the chair to a stop, stepped around to the front, squatted down and flipped up the footrest pads. “Need some help?” he asked, studying Caleb’s handsome little-boy face.

“Nope.” Determination gripped Caleb’s features as he put his tennis-shoe-encased feet firmly on the ground, grasped the armrests and pushed up from the seat, where he promptly wobbled and fell forward into Nick’s arms.

Grace let out an audible gasp and was next to them in a heartbeat. “Caleb, you know you need to take it easy after your treatment.”

“I want to do it myself.”

“Come on, buddy, I’ll help you.” As if he were holding a fragile sheet of glass, Nick guided Caleb into the backseat of his mother’s car and supervised him as he buckled himself in his car seat.

“What color is your horse, Mister Nick?” he asked, staring with a huge grin on his face. “I wanna tell Zachary-G.”

“He’s a bay.”

“Bay?”

“It’s a reddish-brown color, with a black mane and tail. Beautiful.”

Caleb nodded and laid his head back against the seat. “A bay,” he said again as he closed his eyes. “Red-brown.”

Nick stepped back and closed the car door before turning to face Grace.

“Thank you,” she whispered, some of the tension visibly leaving her body in a shoulder shrug. “He always overestimates his strength after every transfusion. It takes a day or so for him to bounce back.”

“You can’t fault him for trying.”

She swallowed and shook her head. “Sometimes I marvel at his will to survive, to go until he can’t go anymore.”

“What’s wrong with him, Grace?” Caution brought her chin up as she studied him and he witnessed the battle between suspicion and trust as it warred across her delicate features and settled in her blue eyes.

“He needs a bone-marrow transplant. He has aplastic anemia and has to have a blood transfusion every two weeks, but his doctor informed me this afternoon that his condition is worsening. We need to find a bone-marrow donor as soon as possible or he’s going to…” Her voice faltered.

Die? Nick mentally finished the horrific statement and reached out for her, folding his arms around her slender shoulders. Sympathy leeched from his insides, but he felt her stiffen and pull away.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “This isn’t any of your concern.” She went around to the driver-side door. “But thank you for your help.” She climbed into the car and fired the engine.

Nick stepped back as she maneuvered out of the parking space and drove away. He stared after her for a moment, snagged the empty wheelchair and turned for the hospital entrance.

Grace Marshall was clearly desperate. Hell, he’d be desperate, too, if he had a dying child, but desperate people did desperate things. Was it possible the donor she was seeking for Caleb was the governor? He didn’t know much about donor matches, but Lila Lockhart stood a good chance of being a blood relative to Caleb Marshall.

Worry needled him all the way back into the hospital and followed him into the elevator. Was it possible Grace knew the governor could be her birth mother? Was she willing to blackmail Lila into donating bone marrow to her dying grandson, or she’d…she’d what? Sabotage Lila’s shot at a presidential bid?

Nick’s sense of right had gone into battle with his sense of duty by the time he stepped off the elevator on the third-floor ICU unit and into the jaws of chaos.

“Code blue…code blue. Paging Dr. Karnahan, Dr. Mark Karnahan to ICU, stat.” The request rang out over the unit’s PA system.

Nick sidestepped a nurse as she rushed a lifesaving crash cart down the corridor to where Nolan and Harlan stood in the hallway. She spoke with them for an instant before wheeling it past them and into the room. Trevor Lewis’s room.

Nick hurried toward them. “Nolan! What’s going on?”

Nolan Law shook his head, his gaze going to the floor for an instant before he made eye contact again. “Lewis coded. One minute he’d agreed to tell us who the shooter was at the governor’s ranch, and the next I was performing CPR.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Nick’s blood churned in apprehension. Trevor Lewis had been stable up until this point. Stable enough to talk. Was it possible someone had a hand in changing his condition so he’d never say another word? What if that someone had been the source of the hinky feeling Nick had had in the parking lot when they’d first arrived?

Nick got his bearings in the east-west hallway and bolted for the window at the end of the corridor overlooking the parking lot below. Nolan and Harlan followed close behind.

“What’s going on?” Nolan asked from next to him as he stared out of the window three floors above the myriad of cars.

“I should have said something, but when we arrived, I had the feeling we were being watched.” Nick put his focus on a man jogging through the lot wearing blue scrubs and a tan jacket with the hood pulled up. “There.”

“I’ll be damned,” Harlan said. “We passed him getting into the elevator when we got off.” Harlan banged his fist against the ledge in frustration. “I barely got a look at him with his head down.”

They watched the man disappear into a bank of trees and shrubs on the outer perimeter of the parking lot. There wasn’t a chance they could catch him at this point.

“We better hope Trevor Lewis survives, because he’s our only link right now.” Nolan pushed away from the window, but Nick and Harlan remained, picking out each car that moved from its space on the tree-lined street beyond the hospital entrance.

“Red compact…Ford Focus. Dark-gray SUV…Tahoe. Black pickup…Dodge.” Nick called out the vehicles. “White…pickup…Dodge.” Anyone in a hurry to clear the area would be long gone by now, but odds were if he’d driven away from the scene in the past ten minutes they’d have a make on what he drove.

Harlan wrote the last vehicle description down on the small notepad he held in his hand. “It’s a long shot, but I’ll see if Sheriff Hale will plug the makes and models into the system. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“We don’t even know if the guy drove a car. He could have been on foot the entire time, could have been standing in this very window when we arrived and timed his escape accordingly. I’m going to check and see if the hospital security cameras caught a visual of his face at some point.”

Harlan nodded. “I can tell you he was tall…six foot, give or take an inch. Powerful build. I’ll see if any hits on the autos produce an owner who matches his physical description.”

“Let’s hope we catch a break.” Nick glanced down the corridor at the empty chair next to the entrance of Trevor Lewis’s room and realized he hadn’t seen Matteo. “Where’s Matt?”

“He wasn’t here when Nolan and I arrived. The charge nurse said she saw him head for the vending room to grab a soda.”

“That takes what, three minutes? He should be back by now. Let’s have a look.”

Together, he and Harlan hustled along the hallway, focused on the vending-machine cubical on the right at the end of the corridor, marked by an information sign hanging above the entrance.

He had a bad feeling about this. First Trevor Lewis; now Matteo? What the hell was going on?

Nick slowed his pace, raised his right hand and motioned Harlan to the other side of the entrance before he sucked up next to the door frame and glanced inside.

The small room was empty except for a row of soda and snack machines ablaze in fluorescent light.

“Nothing,” Harlan said, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know how, but he must have gotten past us.”

Relaxing his stance, Nick stepped through the entrance and surveyed the room for hidden nooks and crannies, still unable to shake the worry surging in his veins. Where was Matteo Soarez? He’d never leave his post.

Frustrated, Nick pulled out his cell phone and dialed Matt’s number.

Over the drone of the machines, he swore he heard a muffled ringtone. “Do you hear that, Harlan?”

Harlan stopped in his tracks. “Yeah.”

“Where’s it coming from?” A wave of desperation floated Nick along the bank of vending machines as he listened to the familiar ringtone grow louder. At the end of the processional, a cooler filled with premade sandwiches stood silent and dark. Unplugged?

In an instant, reality jolted through Nick on the heels of one last ringtone before a beep signaled one missed call.

“Damn,” he whispered as he stared into the corner between the cooler and the wall. Into the narrow gap where Matteo Soarez was crushed against the wall with a black hood over his head.

“It’s Matt! Help me move this!” Nick and Harlan worked in unison, holding on to the cumbersome machine, pulling and rocking it until the space opened several inches.

Nick reached in and snagged Matt’s limp arm where it hung at his side.

“Matt, buddy. Can you hear me?”

Matteo groaned.

A good sign in Nick’s mind. “We’re going to get you out of there. Hold on.”

Harlan jockeyed the cooler case, opening the crack another inch, just enough that Nick felt Matt’s body give in the tight space.

“That’s it! A little more.” Inch by inch, he dragged Matteo out of the crevice and lowered him to the floor.

Fingering the knot of cord that held the bag in place over Matt’s head, Nick prayed that it hadn’t also strangled his buddy in the process. How long had he been pinned? How long had he been deprived of oxygen?

The knot came free and together he and Harlan pulled the bag off Matteo’s head. He blinked against the overhead lights and mumbled underneath the strip of duct tape over his mouth.

Peeling up an edge, Nick stripped the tape off. Matteo let out a stream of profanity that echoed against the walls of the cubical. “Are you okay?” Nick asked, staring at the blazing red mark around Matt’s mouth and the taser burn on his neck.

“I’ll live.”

“What happened?” Harlan rocked back onto the floor.

“Somebody jumped me from behind.” Matt sucked in three gulps of air in a row and sat up. “Got me with a Taser, shoved me into the corner and proceeded to squash me like a grape.”

“Did you get a look at him?” Nick rose to his feet; Harlan followed. Bending down, they each put an arm around Matteo and helped him stand.

“No. It happened too damn fast. One minute my soda was dropping, the next it was me. I did get one punch in, but it felt like I’d slugged an oak.”

“Big guy, huh?” Speculation laced through Nick’s mind. The description of a powerful perpetrator coincided with Harlan’s description of the man he’d seen getting into the elevator. “Could be the guy we saw running across the parking lot.”

Together they helped Matteo out into the corridor.

“I’ve got this,” Matt said as he got his legs working and shrugged off their help. “What’s up with Lewis?” He nodded toward the commotion down the hall.

“Coded half an hour ago. They’re working to save his life right now.” Nick spotted Nolan gesturing in their direction. “Come on. Maybe they’ve revived him.”

They walked back down the corridor and stopped next to Nolan in the doorway of Trevor Lewis’s room. He looked up and shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line.

From inside, behind a privacy curtain, Nick clearly heard a male voice above the hum of a heart monitor and the whoosh of air being forced into Trevor Lewis’s lungs through a bag valve mask.

“Stop CPR. Check the monitor.”

“Still a flat line, Dr. Karnahan.”

“I’m going to call it. Time of death, 5:41 p.m.”

Chapter Three

Nick fidgeted in his chair as he glanced around the conference table at the CSaI team members: Nolan Law, Parker McKenna, Matteo Soarez, Wade Coltrane and Harlan McClain. They were all officially in battle mode after the events at Holy Cross Hospital, and their motto—For Country; For Brotherhood; For Love—never rang more true. Too bad their boss and mentor, Bart Bellows, was out sick, battling a persistent case of bronchitis.

He swallowed, trying to alleviate the knot of gratitude that squeezed in his chest. He had Bart to thank, along with every man sitting at the table right now. Because of them, he was almost whole again. He reined in his emotions and tried to focus on the case at hand. Trevor Lewis’s autopsy report was decisive. He’d been injected with a large dose of potassium chloride, enough to stop an elephant’s heart, and the hospital’s surveillance footage had confirmed the man they’d seen running across the parking lot had been in Lewis’s room moments before Nolan and Harlan arrived. He’d also been the one who followed Matt into the vending-machine room and tried to make him a human pancake with a sandwich cooler.

“None of the vehicles Nick and I spotted came back with an owner who matched the perpetrator’s height and build. We’ve got nothing.” Harlan leaned back in his chair.

“So what do we know about Trevor Lewis, other than someone wanted him dead before he could talk to us?” Nolan Law questioned from his seat at the head of the table where Bart usually sat.

“From a simple background check we know he spent a couple of years in Iraq,” team member Wade Coltrane said. “Other than that, he’s flown under the radar. Sheriff Hale has agreed to release Lewis’s personal effects to us tomorrow morning since no one has come forward to claim them. It includes his cell phone. We should be able to find out who he’s been communicating with. If we get lucky, a name will pop.”

Nolan nodded. “Good work. Parker, I want you, Matteo and Harlan to double your protection and surveillance efforts on Governor Lockhart. She’s planning to spend a considerable amount of time this month out at Twin Harts Ranch rather than in Austin. She’ll be here right up until Thanksgiving. Bart has given us carte blanche to do whatever it takes to keep her and those around her safe.” Nolan shoved his paperwork into a folder and stood up.

“Nick’s working on a special assignment for the governor, but he’ll fill in where needed on this case. Everyone, stay on your toes. We’re dealing with a determined individual here, and I don’t have to tell you how unpredictable someone like that can be.”

A mutual round of agreement prevailed in the room as each team member gathered their paperwork and their thoughts.

“I want you all back here at 0600 hours on Monday morning to cover discovery and a plan of action.” Everyone filed out of the conference room.

Nick took up the rear and flipped the lights off on his way out. He needed to grab a bite to eat before he headed out to his special reconnaissance assignment. He’d been monitoring Grace Marshall’s movements for the past week since seeing her and Caleb at Holy Cross. She was predictable, but she’d yet to make any attempt to contact Governor Lila Lockhart with a blackmail demand, and considering Caleb’s health situation was growing more desperate with each passing day, he expected her to make a move soon. That was, if she knew the governor’s identity….

GRACE GLANCED IN HER REARVIEW mirror, her stare focused on the headlights of the black sedan following her an eighth of a mile back. A knot cinched in her stomach. She’d seen the vehicle several times this week, but had never gotten a look at the driver inside. Now she was sure the same car had pulled in behind her as she left the parking lot behind the Talk of the Town Café after turning in her employment application to Faith Scott.

There was really only one way to find out.

She stepped down on the gas pedal. The car picked up speed. Hesitation tempered the caution ricocheting around inside of her, but she had to be sure. She couldn’t risk having her and Caleb’s trail picked up again. Not when she was sure she was close to finding the only woman in Freedom who might be able to save Caleb’s life.

Glancing at the gas gauge, she watched the needle bobbing near a quarter of a tank. How far could she go? How fast could she run before her past caught up with her?

Caleb’s voice reached her ears from where he played with his toy truck in the backseat. He sputtered and rumbled, imitating the noise of the motor as the truck made a fictitious trail across his knees and up his leg. The screech of a sudden stop, before the rumbling resumed.

She couldn’t let her son down. Not when she was so close.

If she could lose the car and driver in the confusing confines of the Chisholm Trail subdivision, she could backtrack and make it home undetected. She couldn’t risk ever letting Rodney Marshall get as close to them as he had in Amarillo.

The speedometer climbed as she floored the Camry and raced out of town, past the turn that would have taken her to her condo complex.

Gearing down into Third without touching her brake pedal just like she’d practiced, Grace made the sweeping corner into the subdivision without slowing. Ahead of her on the road she could see a set of taillights similar to her Camry’s.

The squeal of brakes behind her made her heartbeat kick up a notch and the car’s taillights screamed red in her left peripheral. He’d failed to anticipate her quick move. It would take him thirty seconds to turn around.

Buoyed by her success, she took a hard right and killed the car’s lights as she aimed for the eastern side of the subdivision with its rows upon rows of unfinished homes and dark streetlamps.

She’d taken the route a hundred times during the day. Memorized every turn, so she could use it to evade him if the day ever came. That day was here.

In her rearview mirror she saw the black sedan zip past as she made the corner and drove parallel with him, but she didn’t let up. She would only have a few minutes before he discovered she’d given him the slip.

Gearing down into Second, Grace turned at the fifth house on the right and shot past the unfinished garage and onto the worn path that led across a field and onto her street.

Hope stirred inside of her, but it was quickly dashed when she spotted a set of car lights coming around the corner on the north end of the street.

Silently she prayed the dust rolling out behind her would settle before he could pick up her trail.

Focused on the last hundred feet, she nosed the car in between the first couple of condo units and drove out onto the paved street. Turning sharply to the right she reached up and hit her garage-door opener before gearing down to a crawl and slipping inside. Only then did she apply the brakes and hit the close button. She didn’t take a deep breath until she heard the overhead door lock in place behind her.

“Where’s the light, Mommy?” Caleb’s tiny voice sliced through the fear holding her in place. She released her seat belt and turned toward him.

“In a minute, I’ll turn it on. Can you hold on?” She reached out and touched her son’s leg to reassure him. She wasn’t sure how determined the maniac following her was, but even a hint of light could alert him to their location inside of the garage.

“Yeah.”

“Good boy.” She patted his leg and listened to him start up his toy-truck sounds again.

Above the rumbling, she listened, but it was the brief flash of light outside in the street that made every muscle in her body tense.

Had he discovered where they lived? Fear slid down her spine and spilled into her body. Rodney Marshall had vowed to kill her for what she’d done. She didn’t doubt that he would, if he got the chance.

Chilled to the bone, Grace shuddered and shoved her hands into the pockets of her sweater, where she came in contact with the business card Nick Cavanaugh had given her at the café a week ago. She closed her fingers around it and slowly pulled it out of its hiding place.

Maybe there was hope after all.

WHAT THE…? NICK HELD his position, curiosity welding him to the spot. He’d parked his pickup on Grace’s street of identical condo units, one after another, until they all looked the same. He’d seen her car roll past him without the headlights on, then slow and disappear into the open garage compartment of her condo unit.

The door had instantly come down, moments before he spotted lights in his side mirror.

Caution welled inside of him as the black sedan crept past his location, braking every so often, before driving forward again. The same black car with Montana plates he’d seen a week ago on Main Street, the day of the purse-snatching ruse.

Nick picked up the notepad he kept on the seat in the truck and jotted down the license-plate number. If he’d doubted it before, he didn’t doubt it anymore.

Grace Marshall was being followed. And she knew it, judging by the practiced evasive move he’d just witnessed.

The car coasted past her house without stopping, flipped a U-turn in the cul-de-sac several blocks ahead and came back for a second pass.

Reaching down, Nick flipped on his lights and caught the driver in the face with his high beams. Just before he dimmed them, he got a good look at the man behind the wheel. White male, mid-to-late thirties, dark brown hair. He stored the description in his memory as he turned the key and fired the engine.